Thursday, August 28, 2008

John the kids and I attended a adoption informational meeting on Tuesday night. It was at a library here in town so the kids were busy reading books while we got to discuss questions that we had. It was nice to meet our social worker and have her meet our family. Only one other family attended the meeting to learn more about adoption and it turns out it is a family I know from my MOPS group. They are just exploring the idea at this point. We discussed being able to go down to Omaha together to take the classes necessary before the home study can take place. Yet the realization hit me that although we are not far at all in the process it would not work out to go to the classes at the same time because we are so much farther than they are at this point. Funny to think that we really have done quite a bit although it doesn't seem like it. Like I was told by a Holt employee, "It is not the paperwork that is hard it is the waiting." It takes a certain amount of time for the background checks to be processed. We are not in a hurry by any means. It was just funny to think that we were too many steps ahead of this other couple for them to catch up, even though I didn't think we had moved to far from the starting line.There was one more family that attended the meeting. They were a local couple and their two year old daughter who had been adopted from China. She was a cutie of course. She and our son hit it off right away and were chasing each other around the room. The couple had three sons and the wife had always known that they were going to adopt. Her brother was also adopted so the idea was always there. It was a nice way for them to get their girl. Just like everyone who I have talked to, that has adopted, they had the firm belief that God knew the right person for their family. With three big brothers she holds her own and they love her. She was said to be the perfect fit!

For the adoption process you have to go through a local and Federal background check. One of the things you need for this is fingerprints. We were surprised to find out that the City charges an individual $12.50 per card for fingerprinting. It turns out that John and I had to have three cards each. Now if you do the math that turns out to be $75 to have your fingers stuck in some ink and pressed to a card. Fortunately John's uncle happens to have some experience with fingerprinting so he happily took care of that for us. Thank you!